I have a Curve 8320 and my husband has a 8700. Now you would think that my phone - with the WiFi - would have a stronger signal, but it doesn't. I can hold both of our phones side by side and my husband's phone will always have 1 to 2 bars of signal more than mine.

penguin3107: I am not as tech savvy as some, so I asked this question of two different reps with my carrier before buying the phone. Both indicated - or so I thought - that it would make a difference in signal strength. Obviously I was mistaken.

NJBlackBerry: other than the signal strength, my phone works great.

Trimix: It never occured to me that older devices, with less hardware, would have a better signal. Learn something new everyday.

From a technical stand point, the signal indicator does not necessarily mean your overall signal strength. Most of the time its an indication of signal or call quality. The more bars, the better quality. That usually goes hand in hand with strength, however if you have something causing interference, the quality can go down but strength can stay high. Your device being newer might not have as good of a reciver, less sensitivity, and show lower bars. As they add more stuff, such as BT and Wifi, you now have more Transmit and Recieve going on in the deivce, even if its not in the same frequency range, it can still cause a small amount of interference. I would suspect this is what the problem is. Also consider its not necessarily fair to compair 2 different model devices. If you both had the same exact device, but noticably different signal strengths, then i would start to worry.